Brad Richards spent the last few days involved in CBA talks with the owners.

Following the developments of last night, he gave his thoughts to Pierre LeBrun of ESPN.com in an email:

“It becomes more obvious that it is ultimatum style negotiating. They weren’t even in town to negotiate tonight. Owners and player meetings went well, but we needed professionals to close the deal and thought that’s what we were attempting to begin to do. To hear we said if we get a pension deal then we agree to everything they want is a bit confusing. But hopefully both sides step back and realize how important it is to get back to table ASAP.”